A girlfriend who was about to
get married was telling me about her wedding plans recently when she said,
almost as an aside: ‘Oh, and I’ve converted to Islam.’
Her fiancé was a Muslim but
she thought it no more than a minor detail — like ordering the corsages, or
finalising the table plan — to arrange a private ceremony before the big day in
which she took on his faith. I think she expected me to say ‘How lovely. And
have you decided on the centre-pieces?’ But instead I blurted out: ‘You’ve done
what?’
‘It’s fine. I really don’t
mind,’ she continued, whilst puffing on a Marlboro Light. ‘It was easy. I just
had to say a few words and it was done. I don’t have to wear a veil or go to
mosque or anything. It doesn’t seem to make any difference at all.’ Apart from
the fact that her children, when they come along, will be brought up Muslims.
‘Well, it will be nice for them to have a faith, and a set of rules to live
by,’ she said.
‘But you have a faith and a
set of rules to live by,’ I argued, feeling more and more offended. ‘You’re a
Christian.’ I wanted to add, ‘You go to nightclubs, drink alcohol, wear skinny
jeans, tight tops and make-up. Why on earth are you converting to a faith which
thinks you are the infidel?’ But I didn’t say that, of course.
‘I’m really not that
bothered,’ she assured me. ‘I’m not a practising Christian. It doesn’t make any
difference to me either way.’
‘But, hang on. If all
Christians took that view, wouldn’t we disappear? There would be no such thing
as Christianity.’ My friend shrugged. She could not see what I was making a
fuss about. And maybe I did have to ask myself why I was so deeply insulted. I
think it was the casualness of the thing that struck me as disturbing. My
friend maintained that reciting the shahada, the
profession of Islamic belief, in front of an imam did not matter.
It may not matter to her, but
I wager it mattered a lot to the imam, to her new husband and to his Turkish
family. And it will matter to millions of Christians who, like me, are worried
about their community selling out.
It seems everyone has a story
to tell these days about a friend becoming a Muslim. There’s a growing trend
for mixed marriage and conversions to Islam in particular on the rise. Asking
around my immediate social circle produced a tale from almost everyone about a
woman they knew, or knew of, who had recently converted. Those stories are
borne out by fledging statistics, which are only just beginning to give us a
picture of the change that may be happening.
The growth of Islam in Britain
is often still put down to immigration, but a study last year estimated that
the number of Islamic converts in Britain has risen by two-thirds from 60,000
in 2001 to about 100,000. Around 5,200 people in the UK become Muslims each
year. And while there are no figures on marriages specifically, we do know that
62 per cent of conversions are women and that the average age at conversion is
27, which is pretty much the age most women get married now.
This doesn’t seem to bother
the Church of England much. After all, we have an Archbishop of Canterbury who
thinks the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in British communities
‘seems unavoidable’ and might even help social cohesion. And perhaps it shouldn’t
bother me. But something about the speed and ease of these apparent epiphanies
makes me uneasy.
Islam is a special case, when
it comes to conversion. To convert to Judaism is incredibly complicated, in
some traditions involving a rabbi rejecting you three times before allowing you
to embark on a lengthy and painstaking process. Catholics are notoriously picky
and arguably spend more time and energy than recruiting in deselecting large
numbers of their existing members for infringements such as divorce and
remarriage. They demand that converts undergo weeks, sometimes months of
preparation which is to end in their saying they believe the entire Catholic
doctrine: a hurdle many cradle Catholics could not clear. Many Hindus still
believe that theirs is an identity that can only be had from birth and as such
there is no formal process for conversion to -Hinduism.
By contrast, Islam allows
anyone to recite a single short sentence and sign a piece of paper. An internet
search turns up dozens of sites instructing on the quickest way to convert —
including doing it in your own living room, on your own — and there are any
number of forums with Muslims giving pre-conversion Christians helpful advice
on how to pronounce the shahada in
Arabic.
You call it
“Leaning on a lamp post”. I call it loitering with intent.’
But notwithstanding the
eagerness of her new faith to welcome her, why should my friend, an Anglican
Christian by birth, so meekly submit to this faith-swap? Could it be that when
it comes to relationships, as Carrie Bradshaw might say, the party without much
grounding in their own religion invariably gives way to the one with a strong
sense of religious identity?
I also fear that we Christians
are just too polite. The notion that we must put others before ourselves is
admirable, but it is also what makes us rather ineffectual at faith-preservation.
Middle-class Christians may be the worst in this respect, and middle-class
female Christians even flakier still. When my friend bends over backwards to
accommodate her Muslim husband, she is displaying the ultimate trait of a
nicely-brought-up English girl: ‘No, no, you first! After your religion. I
insist!’
Of course, the business of one
belief system trouncing another through marriage is not new. As the child of a
Catholic-Anglican partnership, I can testify to how dominant Roman Catholicism
can be in the game of religious scissors-paper-stone. When I was young, I
remember my mother sitting me down and offering me either her faith or my
father’s, which to be fair, was woefully agnostic. ‘You can be a Protestant and
go to Sunday school — yes, school on a Sunday. Or you can be a Catholic and
have a special ceremony where you wear a white dress.’
That’s to paraphrase, but it
wasn’t far off. Unsurprisingly, I chose the pretty dress option. I have never
regretted my choice either. I like Catholicism, with all its unyielding
eccentricities. I like the pomp and ceremony, the incense, confessional, the
Latin mass, the feeling that wherever I am in the world there will be a church
where, no matter what language is being spoken, I will feel at home.
But above all, I like the
moral certainties. I don’t mind the dogma one bit. I would rather dogma and
impossible ideals than confusion and compromise. In that sense, I do identify
with those who choose Islam over the way of no faith, or a seemingly uncertain
faith, like the woolly old C of E.
In uncertain times, and in the
face of an aggressive atheist movement, people who suddenly decide that they
want religion are choosing strong religions with hard and fast rules, strict
boundaries and moral certainties. They don’t want a church that tells them
everything goes. And they don’t want the wishy-washy non-religious faith of Ed
Miliband either. What is ‘a person of faith, not a religious faith but a faith
nonetheless’, as the Labour leader described himself in his conference speech?
Ironically, Mr Miliband went
on to say that his mother had been sheltered by nuns during the war. Even so,
he didn’t like -organised religion. You can’t please some people, least of all
those who still observe the joyless stricture, enshrined by Alastair Campbell,
that ‘we don’t do God’, in public at least.
Incidentally, it seems that
Roman Catholicism vs Islam might make for a more
interesting contest than one with Anglicanism. A Catholic friend who
married an Albanian Muslim tells me that she made it an absolute condition of
the marriage that they raise their kids Catholic and he agreed, and even attends
Mass with her on Sundays.
You may knock us Papists for
being bigots, but at least we stand up for what we believe. Call me
narrow-minded, but I would not convert to someone else’s religion for all the
tea in China. I wouldn’t dare risk the fire and brimstone that my old convent
school teacher Sister Mary Kevin told me was waiting for me if I strayed.
And before you pity me, I’m
happy that way. I never cease to be delighted that having inherited a strong
faith, I don’t have to worry about changing it for another one. I would compare
the satisfaction I get from belonging to a resilient church to being content
with your energy provider. It is, after all, such a lot of bother to switch to
a rival firm and whatever largesse they promise at the point of signing you up
invariably vanishes the moment they have you.
Not wanting to leave anything
to chance, however, the Vatican is so worried about the possibility of Catholic
women converting to Islam through marriage that it has issued an edict. A papal
instruction, amusingly entitled ‘The Love Of Christ Towards Migrants’, warns
women not to even think of loving migrants themselves — well, not in that way.
As I say, you’ve got to hand it to them for chutzpah.
The Church of England,
meanwhile, looks down its nose at such dogma, preferring instead to issue
edicts that are ecumenical to the point of absurdity, in the interests of
social cohesion. As my friend embarks on her new life as a Muslim convert, she
will no doubt discover more about what sort of social cohesion Islam is
prepared to offer her.
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